Microreview [book]: The Bands of Mourning, by Brandon Sanderson

The ultimate chimera, this book is a surpassquel: a sequel that surpasses the original!

I’d thought it was just a myth, a story told to children
before life beat all the creativity and optimism out of them. There’s no such
thing as a surpassquel! How could there be? If the original sets out the
narrative boundaries of the story, all subsequent iterations of the story must
almost inevitably exist only within the confines of those boundaries. To put it
mathematically, sequels are asymptotic—they can approach, but never hope to
surpass, the greatness of the original. Plus, on the practical side, authors,
for obvious reasons, tend to lead with their best foot forward, so to speak,
and as a consequence, it’s exceedingly unlikely that an author would intentionally
save his or her best idea for installment six—if the first effort doesn’t catch
on, there won’t be any more, after all.

To bring the conversation back (or forward?) to Brandon "Branderson" Sanderson’s Mistborn
series, I had even less reason to hope, since after the original Mistborn
trilogy, centered around the peerless Vin, books four and five, while
interesting and plenty entertaining, didn’t have quite the sparkle of the Vin
era. Why hold out any hope that Branderson would find authorial magic on his
third attempt at the Wax + Wayne (or wax and wane? Yin and yang?) formula?

Yet somehow…Branderson managed it. And I think I’ve figured
out how.

I can’t say much without potentially spoiling the surprise,
and in fact that’s part of the reason this sixth book in the Mistverse
is so scintillatingly good: it’s basically a detective novel, full of twists
and turns galore. But that’s not the main reason. You see, I had always thought
the Wax&Wayne stories were especially
unlikely to reach surpassquel status, because even within the diegesis, the
mythology of Vin et al continues to overshadow the present. Kelsier has become
the center of a vaguely Christian religion, while other characters we came to
love in the first trilogy are similarly venerated, their real motivations
poorly understood under the terrible weight of mythology.

It was an interesting decision for Branderson to let the
original series loom so definitively over later stories set in the same world,
but it was also, I reasoned, a brave/foolhardy one, since how can we admire
this new cast of characters/situations if we—and they themselves!—know they are
in every way inferior to the original band of heroes? Why, it would be almost
as though someone made a fantastic trilogy of movies about a story of considerable
pathos and gravitas, then decided to follow it with another trilogy set in the
same world, but with waaaay less at stake, and try to pass it off as equally
awe-inspiring (yes, I’m talking about you, Peter Jackson!).

But in The Bands of Mourning, Branderson has delivered a masterstroke
(of the metaphorical pen) showing why this mythological feedback loop can work: 1) he’s
found a way to connect the latter-day heroes with the legendary figures of the
past, and 2) he’s also exploring, far more dramatically than ever before in the Mistverse, the potential that
Allomancy itself might soon be superseded by technological progress…yet also showing how nope, Allomancers will
continue to thrive with each new innovation. This sort of myth + technology
mash-up felt less successful in the first two Wax and Wayne volumes, but here,
it strikes just the right tone.

All in all, it is my considered opinion that The Bands of
Mourning is Branderson’s finest work in the Mistborn series—and in fact, his
finest work, period!

The Math

Objective Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for finding a way to bring the past into the
present—and keep both past and present relevant despite the encroaching future;
+1 for crafting an excellent mystery

Penalties: none!

Nerd coefficient: 9/10 “Very high quality—a standout in the
series, and the genre itself.”

[“What? Only a 9/10, and after such a glowing review?” –some reader

“Ah, but a 9/10 is as rare as a chimera here at Nerds of a
Feather…see
for yourself!" –me]

***

POSTED BY: Zhaoyun, long on a heretofore
quixotic quest to find a surpassquel and regular contributor at Nerds of a
Feather since 2013.